City Hall Blog

Dallas set to pay $1M for two separate police abuse cases

The traffic stop that resulted in Rodarick Lyles' beating, a DPD officer's arrest and a $500,000 settlement

Last month, the Dallas City Council settled up with motorcyclist Andrew Collins, who’d filed a civil rights suit against Dallas Police officers captured on dash-cam giving him a beating following a September 2010 chase that began on a South Dallas sidewalk. The city paid $500,000 to make that case disappear, though an attorney for one of the accused officers insisted it was nothing more than a payout offered for “political reasons.”

A week from Wednesday, the council will vote to spend close to $1 million to make two other similar cases disappear.

The first involves Rodarick Lyles; the second, Lavell Fairbanks.

On January 28, 2011, as a handcuffed Lyles lay defenseless and face down on the ground, a Dallas Police officer kicked him in the head and used pepper spray on him. It was captured on dash-cam video. Officer Quaitemes Williams, responsible for the assault, was arrested on a charge of official oppression, with Dallas Police Chief David Brown insisting at a press conference in February 2011 that “it won’t be tolerated, and it will be met with both termination and criminal charges if appropriate.”

The other involves Lavell Fairbanks, who, in October 2008, called 911 to his apartment at 9350 Skillman, between LBJ Freeway and Forest Lane. He told police he and his girlfriend were having an argument; he acknowledged he’d been drinking, which is why, he said, he took off running when officers arrived at his doorstep. He would later claim, though, that he decided to surrender to officers — who, witnesses said at the time, beat Fairbanks repeatedly with a flashlight, resulting in part of his skull being removed.

The was scheduled to go to trial — again — last week. But Mike Skinner, Fairbanks’s attorney, says this morning that he received a call from the City Attorney’s Office a month ago about settling; an agreement was reached two weeks ago.

“When we tried it the first time [in January] we were pretty close,” Skinner says. “We polled the jurors to see where we were hung up, and we were closer [than the city]. … I am happy for Mr. Fairbanks to get some compensation. His injuries were substantial, and he could have recovered more” had the case gone to trial again, Skinner insists. “But we had our challenges in the case, such as jurors want to give officers the benefit of the doubt. It’s like many settlements in that it’s a compromise.”

A week from Wednesday, in separate votes, the Dallas City Council will decide whether to settle with Lyles for $500,000 and Fairbanks for $450,000.

That’s a lot of library books unpurchased, street repairs not made, or parks not mowed.

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